Here’s a big surprise (a good one)…remember i mentioned that i figured it couldn’t hurt to try for a credit line increase at this time (even though the account is new) since the initial line was granted by a computer of course and this request would actually be evaluated by a real person lol)…I have a very good credit history and an excellent fico score as well…

Just got the e-mail response to my request (I had asked for an increase to $12,000)…
It said: unfortunately although we could not grant your full requested amount, we have increased you limit to: $10,000 which is the maximum amount we can grant at this time…

I’ll take it!
Glad i decided to go with the Citicard (instead of the Paypal)…

After a few months i might try for $12,000 (or $15,000 tops) after i show a history of doing a lot of purchases and paying the bills on time…

Didn’t want to create a new thread for my question. Hope people will see it here.

I bought $1600 in prepaid Visa cards at Staples last month when the activation fee was reimbursed by rebate. Earned 5% back on Chase Ink with the purchase. Converted the prepaid gc to m.o. at WM. In the past I’ve deposited the m.o. back into checking acct. so funds are there before the cc bill arrives. Is there any down side to using the m.o. to pay down my mortgage which I think is at 2.85%? I can afford to do it.
thanks

The posting of referral information such as codes or links is not allowed anywhere on this site. Members may request referrals in our Official Request A Referral Thread, or privately through chats. Your link has been edited to remove the referral information.

I would find more about the current law. I believe it changed quite a bit since Keebler’s day so it may no longer be doing what you are hoping it would and also, may not be your best option.

I would also add it’s very very unlikely that you will be criminally charged.

The most notable Bankruptcy reform occurred in 2005 (BAPCA) and mine was a few years AFTER that so the new rules already applied. I haven’t heard of any newsworthy change since then.

In fact, I remember seeing graphs showing the number of bankruptcies spike before the law changed and then slowly rise back of from nearly nothing right after the law changed. The number of Bankruptcies before-and-after were virtually unchanged!

Back then I participated in a Bankruptcy forum and learned tons about the Bankruptcy process before I did it. There’s ways to do it wrong and there’s ways to do it right.

Contrary to popular belief, Bankruptcy isn’t for avoiding financial disaster – its for cleaning up after financial disaster.

The best advice that I got was to start living your post-Bankruptcy life before you file for Bankruptcy. In this regard, you reform your finances first and learn to live within your means. Then you use Bankruptcy to avoid having creditors interfere with the recovery that you’ve already put in to motion.

Very generally, you stop paying anyone who’s going to be discharged in the Bankruptcy and you start living paycheck to paycheck. Spend every penny and stop ignoring all the important stuff. Maintain your house and your car. Spend money on your health instead of ignoring it. Get your teeth taken care of. Buy clothing. Spend every penny of your paycheck on reasonable living expenses and don’t leave anything out. Your goal is to demonstrate – by example – that you’re spending every penny of your paycheck on all the reasonable living expenses that normal people have. Don’t skimp out on anything. Keep good records and do it for at least six months (longer if you can).

The Bankruptcy filing will rely on your six months (or more) of history to demonstrate that your living expenses actually consume 100% of your income and therefore you have no money left to repay creditors. This is Chapter 7.

If you manage to have money left to repay creditors, you’ll end up Chapter 13 and you’ll spend the next three to five years repaying what you’ve demonstrated is available.

Far too many people go in to Bankruptcy having skimped and scraped to get by. They neglect healthcare and car maintenance and they live on Ramen noodles. Well, guess what? You’ve demonstrated that you can live on almost nothing and the court will happily put you in to Chapter 13 where you’ll be living on Ramen noodles and skipping car repairs and dental care for FIVE YEARS wile you struggle to repay creditors.

Instead, you should learn what the court thinks are reasonable expenses and live your life fully within those guidelines while you save receipts and establish your pattern. Even if you end up in Chapter 13, you’ll know it well ahead of time because you’ve gotten yourself on a sustainable budget. The best part is that it’ll give yourself the best chance of surviving long-term.

If you can prove that there’s no money left at the end of the month to repay creditors, you’ll be Chapter 7 and you’ll start your new life debt-free and penniless.

Well, over the past couple of weeks I’ve been shedding my Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum coins. It was quite a ride. Maybe it will recover, but I can’t risk riding it all the way down. I read the forums on Reddit for Bitcoin, and there’s a whole bunch of “HODL,” “HODL,” “HODL.” For those unfamiliar with the term, it basically means “Hold on for dear life.” It may be an investment technique, and has worked well for long term stock investors, and may work here, but what if it doesn’t? It will be too late when I find out Bitcoin is back down to some really low amount. As far as percent profits, I do have the most in Ethereum. I bought it all at about $10 and watched it shoot up to over $1,000. That got me nervous. Anyway, I may jump back in, but not now. I’m not a market timer.

Are you an employee or contractor? If an employee, your deduction for unreimbused expenses is (i) contingent on your itemizing (vs. standard deduction) and (ii) only for the amount in excess of 2% of AGI. If you are a contractor, these limits /conditions do not apply, deduct on Schedule C.

@dangeruss In all the years I’ve been married I never knew FSA funds could crossover to the spouse. I thought that a spouse with their own insurance plan and their own FSA account was locked in to only using their own FSA funds. From what I can determine from various webpages that is not true. FSA funds can be used for spouses. Thank you for the tip.

Yeah, There are a number of online sites available on the Internet, where one can invest in funds. Investment means one is securing their future. Investing in mutual funds, International funds, share is also a good idea as they are the long term investing funds.

A good place to start would be to look at local college for a job there. Many of them offer some limited class hours as a benefit of employment. Take probably varies per school and state. When I worked for a university it was 12 hours per semester that was covered. You still had some extra book/etc. expenses but getting the hours covered was huge in the cost of my education.

@richard Not what you asked but… a few years ago I received a letter from my State Tax Dept notifying me that a return had been filed in my name that they didn’t think was real. I confirmed that I hadn’t yet filed my taxes. State advised me to notify the IRS but before I had a chance to do that, the IRS notified me that a return had been filed in my name that they didn’t think was mine. Of course the false returns were looking for large refunds. This happened nationally, to thousands of folks.

So, I would just have in hand the documents they mentioned. They might want you to read a line entry from a previous return so they can confirm its really you.

When my SS# was mis-used I was in the process of re-financing. The lender wasn’t able to get a copy of my previous year’s return because of all this. So I had to call the IRS. I was on “hold” for literally an hour.

My advice for when you call them? Empty your bladder, pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab some snacks and get comfortable.

Depending on how spread out your dental payment will be, you could apply for a credit card or two to easily make ~$500-$1000 in promotional bonuses. For example, Chase Sapphire, BOA premium rewards card etc.

I recommend Alliant CU for those who do bank churning and use it as main hub for direct deposits. IME, it has also been very user friendly since I have their 3% Visa signature card which I use mainly for manufactured spending. They also gave me a huge credit line to work with. I’ll give 5 stars for this CU.

Your state plan (Bright Start) offers a good array of funds, at reasonable expense ratios. These include both passively managed funds (referred to as Index) and some actively managed funds – these include some Vanguard funds, such as an S&P index fund at 0.10% annual investment management fee.

Your 4.95% state tax deduction will likely more than offset your investment fees, if you simply spread the 4.95% over an average 10-year holding period since your child is now age 10. So that will basically provide 0.50% per year.

Note it appears that TODAY is the deadline for funding the account to get the 2017 state tax benefit based on the information shown in the Tax Center on that site.

When Yahoo trashed their portfolio, I set up a spreadsheet in my Google Drive to pull in current quote, day change, etc. Google offers various functions such as: =GOOGLEFINANCE(“AAPL”,“price”). List of all functions here: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en

I have found that it’s not always 100% reliable, e.g., the date function is a day off, some quotes are off a penny or two, etc.

IRS says many who prepaid property taxes may still face cap on deductions

Not surprised - those were kind of the rules before and IRS and is just clarifying the rules. Even before this hysteria started, you were always allowed to fudge on the payment for a bill received - e.g. pay billed 2018 property tax in 2017, pay spring semester tuition in Dec, early payment of Jan mortgage. All this existed before and was all kosher.

It is amazing to see how many people (including people with 500K income) have absolutely no clue about the tax system and they are leaping to do stupid things/following their neighbors and friends like lemmings and then asking questions. I had one person asking me if he should be prepaying the property taxes when he is squarely in the AMT region and he had already paid it. And then there are people who want to pay mortgage for the next 3 years.

On a personal note, I find this plan to be disgraceful. I don’t need a tax cut. The wealthy certainly don’t need a tax cut. It boggles the mind that people who make 50k a year still support Trump. I heard on the radio the average “savings” for people under 75k a year is $18 a week. Don’t spend it all in one place.

I’m glad you’re flush enough to not need a tax break. I’ll say it, I need a tax break. I’m tapped out. And instead I get a $250 tax increase. I’ll gladly take $18 over a $250 increase.

Agree with you. I am not going to think about what rich people are going to save. I am happy as long as I save something. My savings are going to be limited as we are doing itemize. But I think, we can club our property taxes and save some money every alternate year. Those bracket changes should help us to save something. Not sure if we are going to save anything from obama care tax. I remember, there was a email from HR about extra tax when obama care became law. May be it will go away from next year.

In my case, hard to say since I have QLD, DDM and AAPL. The first two has 600% gains and the second one has 11,000% gains so if I sell, basically 100% of the amount is gained so is there a strategy to sell and still use it again to make money while having cash from the sale?

It is simple - you need to know your state tax bracket and you need to decide whether you want to take profits in the near futureand diversify or stay in the same positions.

Called BofA again and it seems my calculation is correct and basically they said that even if my mom drops from the Platinum Honors tier on January 1, 2018 for not meeting the $100,000 average balance on December 31, 2017, I would need a balance of $145,000 on January 1, 2018 so that the average 3 month daily balance on that date will be $100,000 assuming I don’t take anything out so t0 hat at the end of the statement cycle which is basically the last business day of the month, it would meet the $100,000 requirement and she would get upgraded back to the Platinum Tier automatically on February 1, 2018 as they always upgrade those that meet the requirements every month if they are already in the Preferred Rewards program. They also said the Cash Rewards bonus is $262.50 and the Preferred Rewards status for the 75% bonus is only needed during redemption of the reward. Ofcourse the $65,000 needed to earn the extra $112.50 would be earning $70.00 in interest at 1.30% elsewhere so in reality, it’s really only $42.50 more and not $112.50 extra compared to the initial $150.00 bonus.

I was impressed with the 1.5% rate and was about to open an account. However, I then chatted with them regarding the dollar amount maximum transfer allowed to/from external linked banks. It is only $10,000. That is absurd considering most banks like this allow much more, like 100K to 250K.

So, only use this bank if you are willing to slowly deposit and withdrawal amounts under 10K.

Reply by Bill C, Northpointe Bank:

NorthpointeBank | Dec 7, 2017

Hi Jarlath,

I wasn’t able to locate the chat you reference but it sounds like there was a disconnect here. It is not correct that we cap external bank-to-bank transfers at $10k per day. If initiated by an outside bank Northpointe places no limit on the transaction amount.

Thank you,

Bill C, Northpointe Bank

My comment: This is exactly what I suspected from the beginning and commented in my BBVA experience (example) above. CSRs are frequently clueless.

Just so you know, the maximum spousal benefit your wife will get is half of the benefit you’d get at your FRA of 66. Delaying to 70 will still benefit you, but it won’t increase her spousal benefit beyond that.

“The maximum benefit for the spouse is 50% of the benefit the worker would receive at full retirement age.”

Thanks for that info.
I did not know that and will have to adjust my figures in my spreadsheets. This probably will not affect my choice to wait till 70 though. The main reason I’m waiting till 70 is that my wife’s family has a tendency to be long lived. Most of her relatives have and are living past the 100 year mark.

This offer periodically pops up. It is good for anyone, no attendance required. If you miss it it will come around in a few months.

I only saw it available last year around the end of the year, and I failed to notice the same offer again this year until around now. (I discovered this year’s CPN code on my own by manipulating the CPN code from last year, but thereafter I found the link in the OP posted on Nov 7, 2017 at some investor web site or blog).

@pricelessprice I just got an OBC a couple months ago. You have to find the secret link and it is good for $50k in spending at 5%, after you first qualify by having $6500 in spending at 0.5% for the non bonused categories or 1% for the bonused ones. Unfortunately I got it right as the PO MO shut down.

@pianopanic - First, congratulations on being in remission… That’s definitely great news and I wish you the best!

I am a life/disability broker who has helped many previous FWF members and would be happy to help. You had mentioned that you also have a $750k term policy that you took out in your 20’s. Since you are now 42, is that term policy a 20-30yr term? If so, most term policies allow you to convert the policy (much like you did with your group life policy with MetLife), while avoiding all medical underwriting. What that means to you, is that you should be able to convert all or a portion of that $750k term policy to a permanent form of insurance (either Universal Life or Whole Life), which would probably be much more competitively-priced than that group MetLife policy. I would also imagine that you probably were approved at either Preferred Plus or Preferred NT rates on your existing $750k term policy, which at your age of 42, shouldn’t make the conversion option as costly - We’d just have to run the numbers.

Anyway, if you happen to know the name of the carrier that your existing policy is with, then I would be happy to hop on a conference call and work out all of the details with you and the carrier. I’m in CA, but licensed in most all 50 states. The main question to ask yourself is whether you think you will want or need coverage once your existing $750k term policy expires. If this is the case, then your conversion option (if available) will be worth its weight in gold.

Ok. Thanks. I will then go ahead and change the password. It’s pretty interesting that I have only been able to do a separate read only user name / password with Wells Fargo. Will have to see if all go to this token method.

I’ve opened 3 checking accounts in the past 6 years where I needed checks. Only one of the banks offered free checking. That didn’t stop me from asking, and getting them for free at all three. I haven’t yet had to re-order.